“She had to leave for personal reasons. She was talking to me for awhile about some personal issues,” Mayor Gregory C. Neffinger said Friday.

Cabral, who also served as emergency management director, had a salary of $75,000 a year. The former city official, whose last day of employment with West Springfield was Jan. 14, could not be reached for comment. The mayor said that Cabral had done a good job while working for the municipality.

She is the latest high-profile municipal official to leave the city’s employ in recent months. In July, Neffinger laid off long-time Planning Administrator Richard A. Werbiskis and in May Principal Assessor Lauren J. Elliott quit to take a better paying position in Greenwich, Conn., after only two months on the job in West Springfield. She had replaced former assessor Christopher C. Keefe, who the mayor fired in February following a dispute over abatements.

And more recently, Neffinger declined to reappoint Planning and Construction Committee Chairman David J. Partridge, who has criticized the mayor for bypassing the committee’s recommendation in choosing architects for the public library building project.

Cabral was the city’s first economic department director and served under the mayor’s newly created Planning and Economic Development Director Douglas P. Mattoon. She was active in coordinating city public safety responses during Huricane Sandy. Cabral had plans to work to draw more businesses to the city, especially in the Merrick section, where she had hoped to start an arts center.

Her background in business was extensive, according to information posted online in LinkedIn. She has a master’s degree in business administration from Elms College in Chicopee and had worked as an accountant with KPMG Peat Marwick. She was chief financial officer with Farm Credit Financial Partners Inc. from Jan. 1999 to January 2009.

An adjunct professor in accounting and business at Elms College, Cabral started and is president of Care for Our Troops Inc. That group sends care-type packages to U.S. military personnel stationed overseas.